Every day we hear reports of incremental success of the Navy divers in bringing out the mortal remains of the dead miners from inside Krem Ule. Only those who dive inside the treacherous mines can comprehend the dangers that lurk under those rat hole mines which are veritable traps. Yet we don’t hear of condemnations on social media against illegal rat hole mining. No one has petitioned Change.org to ban rat hole mining in Meghalaya as they have petitioned for the trees in Upper Shillong. Rat hole mining violates Article 21 of the Constitution- the Right to Life. But no one cares. East Jaintia Hills is too distant a place.
Clearly the priorities of rights activists are misplaced. When only certain categories of trees because of their aesthetic appeal become far more important than human lives then the elitist agenda is clearly evident. On a daily basis hundreds of trees are cut from the forests of Meghalaya and transported to the timber and plywood factories outside the State. It would appear that there are no laws or regulations in place. The girth of most of these trees do not meet the prescribed specifications of the Forest Conservation Act 1980. Meghalaya has no regulation even for stone quarries or sand banking from rivers. It’s a laissez faire state. But no tears are shed for this massive degradation of the environment. Recently Star Cement was able to procure mining rights for limestone in Brichyrnot, East Jaintia Hills even though the area is within the proximity of the Narpuh WildLife Sanctuary. This despite protests from the local people. How the Company was able to get past the State Pollution Control Board merits investigation. Here too there’s complete silence from self-professed conservationists and social media warriors. It appears that what happens in another district of the State does not matter to the people of Shillong.
In 1996 the Supreme Court had ruled, “The word “forest” must be understood according to its dictionary meaning. This description covers all statutorily recognized forests, whether designated as reserved, protected or otherwise for the purpose of Section 2(i) of the Forest Conservation Act which pertains to restrictions on the State Government for dereservation of forests or use of forest land for non-forest purpose. The term “forest land”, occurring in Section 2, will not only include “forest” as understood in the dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the Government record irrespective of the ownership.All of the above regulations of the FC Act are violated in Meghalaya on the plea that this is a state governed by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The question here is whether the Sixth Schedule overrides the Constitution of this country.
